Fundamental to this I find the existence of cratons on every major continental plate to be significant. Cratons are continental nuclei. And worldwide we find these in all continental plates. Moving away from the cratons the dates get younger. The original cratons (early continents) accumulated others to form supercontinents. These then broke apart, reformed, and broke apart again to form our world today.

Doctor Bashir: "Of all the stories you told me, which were true and which weren't?"Elim Garak: "My dear Doctor, they're all true"Doctor Bashir: "Even the lies?"Elim Garak: "Especially the lies"

Thanks for the welcome Coragyps! As for the Grand Canyon, it has experienced much greater uplift than the Miss. hence the greater depth. And the canyons at St Helens were carved in a unique type of material, volcanic ash. Because it's unconsolidated, it has very little resistance to erosion. But the interlocking grains give it the strength to support a steep face. Some YECs have said that the Grand Canyon was carved rapidly in soft sediment, but just a quick look at Grand Canyon stratigraphy shows this is impossible. Grand Canyon has vertical cliffs in sandstone and gentle slopes in the shales, like most natural landscapes. But this is the opposite of what is seen in unconsloidated sediment. Anyone familiar with construction sites will know you can't dig a trench in wet sand. Wet sand won't hold a face for 5 minutes much less 5,000 years. Wet clay OTH has cohesion, and will hold a vertical face.

Oh no! I don't want to work! Just kidding. That sounds like a great idea for a thread. I'm no expert on the Grand Canyon, and I'm sure I would learn more from a thread like that than I could ever contribute. I will definitely check it out. Thanks. Brent

1. The age of the earth "problem" is less important than the evolution "problem" to most creationists. I think that they would be much more willing to abandon the "Young Earth" part of their name then they would ever abandon their "Creationism" part. Biblical references to the age of the earth are vague but references to creation are not. Contradictory yes, but not vague.

2. It is much easier to fake your way through a conversation about evolution than it is about geology.

3. There are more opportunities to quote mine evolutionists.

4. The geologic evidence is MUCH harder to refute than biological because it is MUCH more simple. The geologic history of the earth is extrodinarily well understood. The evolutionary history seem to be not as much although there is much more to understand there.

5. There are seemingly many more avenues of evolution to discuss on the layman's level. Most people at least know ABOUT genetics (i.e. that genes exist and they are the method of herdity, etc). Then there are all sorts of psudo-philoshopical ways to "refute" evolution. You catch my drift?

6. The geologic evidence is much more likely to strike congnitive dissonance in YECs. There are so many "silver-bullet" evidences against flood geology that really the only thing they can do to avoid their head exploding is to walk away. That is not to say that there are also silver bullets for anti-evolution, the problem is that they seem to be much more difficult for a layman to understand if they are not willing to put in the effort.

As an example, a silver bullet for a flood is evaporites. That is very simple to understand and YECs CONSTANTLY run away from that argument because they simply cannot deal with it. It can be described in full detail in a few sentences without any confusion.

A silver bullet in the argument against evolution is easily the evidence derived from ERVs. The problem with this is that it takes quite a bit of effort just to explain the facts in enough detail to present the case properly. That effort is often lost because YECs are loath to actually READ anything in the first place. If this were not true, they would not be YECs as it requires ignorance of fact to be a YEC to begin with. Most of the time at least.

Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)